He Is Everything
by tigerlilycorinne
Summary: "I told him it would be alright. I told him… I didn't tell him, I never told him. Not in a way that he believed. Not in a way he could let in and hold on to. Everything he was to me. That he was everything." Chapter 60, Wayward Son Baz finally tells Simon everything he means to him.


Simon Snow is lying on the sofa.

Merlin, how I wish he'd just be there the way he was earlier, before this fiasco began.

With a frown and sadness in the set of his shoulders. Without the blood, without the just-healed wings. Without the probable internal injuries. Awake instead of unconscious- from exhaustion, from injury, maybe even from _blood loss._

Simon Snow is lying on the sofa and we're in San Diego in Agatha's apartment and Shepard is making too much noise with breakfast. The sky is grey through the window. Penelope Bunce shares a bed with Agatha; I can tell and they're not up yet.

Simon Snow is lying on the sofa, and he's been asleep for at least sixteen hours. He slept through the ten-hour drive from the horrible Quiet Zone…

_Fire. Smoke. _I think I'm probably extremely close to death. I wonder if I have a heart. I wonder if I'm broken somehow, because my memory won't play forwards the way time works. It just keeps going back to the fight. The fight, the fight, the fight.

_Simon's lying on the ground. His wing is bent the wrong way._

_Simon._

Gunshots, then no gunshots, and all I could think was _Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon is on the ground. His wing is bent the wrong way. There were gunshots and then-_

Simon Snow stretches.

There is nothing remarkable about Simon Snow's eyes. They're a standard size and shape. But looking at me like that, they could stop the world from spinning.

"Hey," he says. He's croaky from sleep and I know, suddenly, that he was right: somehow, I'm alive, or I wouldn't be able to feel like this. He sounds so real that I'm choking before I can even say a word back.

"_Simon_," I whisper. I can taste the salt of my own tears on my tongue. It's so much, all of a sudden, an overwhelming rush of nothing, as if the Humdrum placed his hand between my shoulders and pulled the feeling instead of my magic, made me hollow for this boy, alive.

This boy, still breathing.

Without this boy still breathing, I'd be hollow forever.

I didn't tell him, never told him.

"Baz," I hear Simon say, and I open my eyes. I'm not sure when I closed them. His hand fumbles clumsily for mine and I'm drowning and he's holding me, pulling me up. Always the hero. "Hey, Baz. It's okay. We're going to be okay."

It makes me think of that time, right at the beginning of our truce. _It's okay that you're not okay. Whatever you're feeling is okay._

"It's not," I say, but I let him wipe my tears off my cheeks and I help him sit up so I can sit beside him in Agatha's blankets. They twists around his legs, pink and crumpled, like they're mocking our tragedy with their happily ever after.

Simon's hand is warm on my cheek, solid. Even without his magic, Simon is still the sun. He's still the hero. I vividly remember his intoxicating power; the mere idea of it kept me alive when they shoved me in a coffin, but I never fell in love with the power.

And I can't stop seeing him powerless in the dust.

"It will be." Simon leans into me, as if reminding me he's here.

I shake my head. _His wing is bent the wrong way._ "You don't know that." I knew that before, or I thought I did. I don't know why I trusted Lamb. I don't know why, I don't know why.

Simon looks confused when I fumble with his shirt. I haven't even… done anything… since the first time when…

"Close your mouth, that's not what I'm doing," I say around my tears, which won't fucking stop. "You almost _died_." His chest is warm beneath my hand and I can feel his heartbeat there.

_Beat, beat, beat. I can feel his heartbeat. Alive, alive, alive._

"I've almost died loads of times," he murmurs into my hair when I bury my face in his shoulder. I don't move my hand. I don't let him move at all, not that it seems like he wants to. He's got his arms around me like he'll never let me go and I want this for forever. Me and my pathetic optimism. It's selfish, but I want him here _with me_ forever. And then he says, like the moron he is, "I didn't have magic is all." He's terrible at sounding nonchalant when he's anything but.

"I never told you-" my voice breaks, and I hate myself and Simon Snow almost died.

Right in front of my eyes, right there, blood soaking the ground beneath him like an oil spill. Light the oil on fire and you could burn me to the ground.

Stupid, stupid Simon goes all stiff and afraid around me, like I'd ever tell him something I knew would upset him. I'd lie fit to please the devil if it'd make him smile.

This one…

This one I'm not sure he wants to hear. He confuses me six ways to Sunday, the way he wants me until he doesn't and then doesn't until he does. But this one, I need to say.

"That you're everything," I finally whisper, half wild with the crushing weight of _what if_. _I love you_, I want to say, but it just comes out, "Don't you dare get killed. You're not allowed to just _almost die_, do you understand?"

Simon looks at me with shattered eyes. It's like looking into a mirror. He doesn't say anything. I don't care. He's alive. As long as that's true, I can continue existing the way I do.

"Were you scared?" Simon asks finally. As if I'd ever tell him _he's everything_ unless I was fucking terrified.

Maybe I shouldn't have said it.

Maybe it doesn't matter, now that I've said it.

"I thought you were going to die," I whisper into his neck, and he curls a wing around me, like if only he could wrap us up together in a cocoon, nothing on the outside could touch us.

He holds me like I'm a ghost he's afraid will fade away, and I feel like nothing could. I want this. Us. _I want to be your terrible boyfriend_, I remember him saying, and even though I've relived the moment a million times, this time it really breaks me.

You'd think I'd have a million tears to cry, since I drink so much blood and all, but I run out of tears after what seems like no more than ten minutes.

Simon holds me for longer than that.

If he'd died, I don't think I could keep on going. I definitely wouldn't be able to _live_. Simon's the only one who's ever insisted that I'm alive, and I only believe him because I'm with him when he says it, and in that moment I do feel alive. As soon as I step away from him, everything's colder.

As soon as I step away from him, I'm not sure I'm alive anymore. Doing magic is the only other thing that breathes life into me, when I can feel the power flowing like licking flames up the inside of my arm as I cast.

Magic is the only thing that keeps me feeling like I belong here, instead of in a grave. Simon is magic. The concept of Simon Snow is magic. There's magic in his rare smiles that he gives me, the moment he stands up, bloody and bruised, from the hard ground, is magic.

I love him.

It still might kill me one day.

**Simon**

Baz clings to me like he's a lifeline. Like if he looks away, the world will flip over and I'll have died in that fight. Or he clings to me like I'm his lifeline.

I don't know.

Maybe I'm afraid he needs me too much. Or he thinks he does. I don't want it to be the end of _his_ world when it's the end of _mine_.

I love that he cares about me, of course I do. To know that he was scared for me is like a mother's kiss, not that I'd know. It's a lover's kiss, I guess. It's exhilarating. It's a sentimental victory that someone I care for so much cares for me back.

And it's fucking terrifying.

Because I'm not invincible. And yes, I want him to cry over me- _I can promise to cry over your corpse,_ I think he said- but if I died, I'd want him to keep going. To carry on.

I wouldn't have minded. Before. When I never really thought about dying. When I lived like I was untouchable. I _was _untouchable, I just didn't know it.

I know it now.

I know I'm not like that anymore. I'm not _that_ anymore.

"Baz," I say before I think, "I don't want you to need me." And then I wish I'd thought first.

Baz pulls back from me, his hair in his face and his eyelashes still wet. He's beautiful. He looks like something the world wanted to gift to be an aspiration and accidentally gave him to me instead. "Simon," he says, and it takes me back to that first time I really noticed. Right before we walked into that vampire pub and he smoked a fag to put on a show for Nicodemus.

He was dead ferocious. He's still fierce, just less feral. Softer now. With me, at least. Or maybe he was always like that inside and didn't know he could be on the outside.

"I'm not invincible anymore," I explain, trying not to sound wrecked. "I'm not gonna live forev-"

"You survived this, didn't you?" Baz's fingers are cold on my cheeks. "You're still a hurricane. You still fight like you've got infinity in your pocket." I don't know who he's trying to convince, me or himself? "You got back up."

I flinch and look away. The pink blanket looks like a bubble of safety I can't wrap myself in. A security blanket. I tuck my wings behind me almost without thinking. "I got back up to go down." I stare at my hands, now twisting on each other in my lap. "I got up so I could take out as many as I could before I went down." _For you,_ I think. And then I say it. "For you."

Baz makes a sound like he's choking and fists his hands in my shirt, kissing me like he wants to be kissing me even when he already is. I don't have anymore to give, so he gives it to me, a two way street that never runs out of cars. A river to the ocean, which comes back down as rain, runs back into the river, again, again, again. "Snow, you moronic bastard of a hero, if it ever comes down to you or me, fly away until you can't fucking remember why you're running." He kisses me again, like he's trying to force his words into my mouth and root them into my brain.

"I wouldn't leave you. Even if we'd lose, I'd never leave you." I hate even the idea of it. Even the concept existing is terrible, the kind of terrible that tortures your mind and you want to erase the physical possibility of such a thought from existence. I hate that he's thought of that.

And then I realize that's exactly what I'd want if the roles were switched. Isn't that what I did? I stood up and fought, hoping that when I died fighting, he'd make it out alive? That he'd leave me to die so he'd live?

That's what I wanted.

I was going to die. The last thing I wanted was for Baz to come down with me.

I hate that I get where he's coming from. That I'm no longer enough to keep us safe and now we have to think about things like this.

Actually, we don't have to.

"No," I say, shoving the idea from my mind for now, "I'll be right there with you. I might not be able to do much, but I'll do it, everything that I can."

Baz gives me the same look he gave me right after finding out I was the humdrum. Or that it was the echo of me. Or, well, at that time, he knew it looked like me. (Unless he'd figured it out by then, for real. He's so fucking smart.) "You took out half a dozen vampires, once you got that sword-hatchet, didn't you? You can hold your own just fine. Better than fine."

I wrinkle my forehead at him. "Sword-hatchet?"

"Did you even listen to the rest of my sentence or did you only pay attention to the fighting terminology?" He rolls his eyes, blinking rapidly over the red-rimmed gray, and I know our strange, broken conversation is over.

"I got lucky, I had a weapon and they were shit fighters."

"You were brilliant." He's still being soft on me. I don't know if it's because he genuinely feels soft on me right now or if he just thinks my ego needs stroking or I'll get us killed.

"Do you think I'll get us all killed?"

Baz raises an eyebrow. I've never been more glad to see an eyebrow raised in my life. It means he's him and he's okay, and no, he's not making a conscious effort not to shatter me. "No."

"How do you know?"

"Because you and Penelopy are the best fighters I've ever met and no one's going to beat you."

I shift and unfold my wings again, letting them spread behind me. "I won't always have Penny right by me."

"But you'll have you," Baz argues, "And me."

Right. "But you don't want to stay in Vegas?"

"_Vegas?_" Baz stares at me as if I've gone off my rocker. "That place is full of vampires. Why would I stay there?"

I blink at him, remembering the hotels full of grey-skinned people and dark sunglasses. "Well. Because it's full of vampires."

"Yes." Baz pushes fingers through my hair and I sigh, laying my forehead on his shoulder and running my hands up and down his back. "But it won't have you, I expect."

"I'd stay for you." I look up at him, and he's watching me like I'm the only thing that matters. I wonder if he knows I'd go to hell for him. Of course I'd stay in Vegas for him.

Shepard calls for breakfast, and Penny says she'll be there in a minute. "If you overcooked the eggs, Shepard, Morgana help me, I shall never forgive you."

She eats a lot after a fight. So do I. This one was just _different_. I'm not all that hungry.

Or, I am, but Baz is in my arms, and I'd rather it this way.

"Let's go home, love," Baz says, and my eyes burn with the prickling need to cry.

_Home_, he called it. Like we belong in the same place, like England is _our_ home, and fuck me, I miss England so much.

_Home_, he called it, and I realize I haven't lost him to Los Vegas.

"Yeah," I breathe.

Shepard calls again.

"Baz," I ask as we stand and head for the kitchen, "What if we aren't going to make it, the two of us?" _Could you leave me if I asked you to?_ You've got a vampire life ahead of you, centuries upon centuries.

Baz knows what I'm asking. He shakes his head. He's got the expression he gets when you couldn't change his mind if you threatened him with fire. "_No._"

"Right then." I take his hand. "We'll carry on then, together."


End file.
